In eighth grade at Kaysville Junior High, a rather unpopular teacher named Mr. Rice showed us Escape from Sobibor, a movie that tells the story of an uprising in a German concentration camp. I remember sleeping through some of it, but I also remember being intrigued by it, having learned much earlier about Anne Frank and the underground activity she and her family were involved in. Later, I learned about the Soviet prison camps, the Gulag. As with the story behind the movie I saw in junior high, the idea of escape from a vast system, stereotypically cruel and secure in most people's minds, has always been intriguing. (To be completely honest, escapes from modern-day prisons are pretty intriguing.) There is something redeeming and inspiring in hearing of people who were willing to sacrifice their lives for the chance — not necessarily freedom itself — just the chance of freedom.
In The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom (ISBN: 978-1-59921-975-2) by Sławomir Rawicz, one can read about just such an escape and one that combines World War II history, the Gulag, and adventure travel into one. Billed as a true story, the reader follows Rawicz, a Polish cavalry officer, from Moscow's notorious Lubyanka to the a small outpost of a prison camp in northern Siberia, and then about 4,000 miles south, to India, after his escape. The escape itself is one of the few truly exciting scenes in the book, as the rest reads much like a travelogue, but it is all adventure after adventure as the small party of fugitives walks through Russia and then the wastelands of Mongolia and China. They pick up a fellow escapee near Lake Baikal and experience Oriental hospitality over and over again in their travels through the deserts and mountains of western East Asia. These usually touching, sometimes comical, visits are a major reason the travelers made it to India alive. As is to be expected, they lose a few of the party along the way to starvation and exhaustion. In the end, though, their desire to be free is triumphant, as they walk out of the hills and into the arms of a British Indian patrol.
I enjoyed the book, which reads like a novel. The story was exciting, intriguing, and exhilarating. It was interesting to read the story of torture at the hands of the Russians, the hardships experienced by the prisoners during the prisoner transfer operation across the vast expanses of Russia, and the way the labor camp was organized. The escape and the adventures that laid therein were also fun to read about and did give off the sense of the indomitable human spirit. The only thing that may be a bit of a negative about the book (aside from some mild strong language typical of Englishmen (Rawicz settled in England after the war)) is that it likely doesn't live up to its billing as being a true story. The epic adventure has gone under the microscope of investigators and researchers a few different times. Since the author lived in England, the BBC did a bit of research, as well as an American woman who wrote a book about her efforts and her inconclusive results. The one thing that has been established is that Rawicz likely did not make the trek. After that, one is left to make one's own conclusions including a number of possibilities ranging from him doing part of it to others completing the year-long hike and from the story being a compilation of others' adventures to it simply being a prisoners' tale that became, thanks to the horrors of war and the Gulag, impressed so strongly in people's minds that they genuinely believed the story was theirs or their acquaintances'. I am personally partial to the latter two ideas, but think that the book was a great story regardless of veracity and even though I went into my reading of the book knowing about the controversy, and therefore approaching it as fiction, it does cause one to think about freedom, liberty, and the indomitable human spirit.
In The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom (ISBN: 978-1-59921-975-2) by Sławomir Rawicz, one can read about just such an escape and one that combines World War II history, the Gulag, and adventure travel into one. Billed as a true story, the reader follows Rawicz, a Polish cavalry officer, from Moscow's notorious Lubyanka to the a small outpost of a prison camp in northern Siberia, and then about 4,000 miles south, to India, after his escape. The escape itself is one of the few truly exciting scenes in the book, as the rest reads much like a travelogue, but it is all adventure after adventure as the small party of fugitives walks through Russia and then the wastelands of Mongolia and China. They pick up a fellow escapee near Lake Baikal and experience Oriental hospitality over and over again in their travels through the deserts and mountains of western East Asia. These usually touching, sometimes comical, visits are a major reason the travelers made it to India alive. As is to be expected, they lose a few of the party along the way to starvation and exhaustion. In the end, though, their desire to be free is triumphant, as they walk out of the hills and into the arms of a British Indian patrol.I enjoyed the book, which reads like a novel. The story was exciting, intriguing, and exhilarating. It was interesting to read the story of torture at the hands of the Russians, the hardships experienced by the prisoners during the prisoner transfer operation across the vast expanses of Russia, and the way the labor camp was organized. The escape and the adventures that laid therein were also fun to read about and did give off the sense of the indomitable human spirit. The only thing that may be a bit of a negative about the book (aside from some mild strong language typical of Englishmen (Rawicz settled in England after the war)) is that it likely doesn't live up to its billing as being a true story. The epic adventure has gone under the microscope of investigators and researchers a few different times. Since the author lived in England, the BBC did a bit of research, as well as an American woman who wrote a book about her efforts and her inconclusive results. The one thing that has been established is that Rawicz likely did not make the trek. After that, one is left to make one's own conclusions including a number of possibilities ranging from him doing part of it to others completing the year-long hike and from the story being a compilation of others' adventures to it simply being a prisoners' tale that became, thanks to the horrors of war and the Gulag, impressed so strongly in people's minds that they genuinely believed the story was theirs or their acquaintances'. I am personally partial to the latter two ideas, but think that the book was a great story regardless of veracity and even though I went into my reading of the book knowing about the controversy, and therefore approaching it as fiction, it does cause one to think about freedom, liberty, and the indomitable human spirit.
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От первого лица: Разговоры с Владимиром Путиным (ISBN: 5-264-00257-6), or First Person: Discussions with Vladimir Putin (my translation), by Nataliya Gevorkyan, Natalya Timakova, and Andrei Kolesnikov is a book that consists of not much more than a series of interviews with Vladimir Putin. There were sections in which old friends, his ex-wife, an old teacher, and even his daughters made some comments, but it was mostly just transcripts of Putin talking to the three reporters. Putin talked about his childhood, his schooling, his career ambitions, his family, his time in Germany, his athletic endeavors, and his meteoric rise from unknown in St. Petersburg to the heights of power in Moscow. Putin went into quite a bit of detail about his childhood, schooling, judo exploits, and even talked quite a bit about his courtship of his ex-wife (they were still married when the book was written). He also talked a lot about the early days of real, democratic politics in St. Petersburg, which was the springboard for his political career. Finally, the reporters asked a lot of questions about the Russian issues of day, most of which had to do with Chechnya. Putin explained why he chose the positions he did on Chechnya and how he figured it made Russia a more secure country.
The answer is The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss (ISBN: 978-0-14-310499-5), but with all movies, the book was only a starting point, and then the screenwriters went from there. (It’s worth noting that the original story hasn’t been in print much since its 1812 printing and that most people have read a French translator’s version that abridged the original and then added a new storyline halfway through.) Then again, it’s only fair to note that it seems Wyss was highly influenced by Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. The story follows a Swiss pastor and his family (his wife and four boys) as they venture off to the colonies to start a new life. Their well-equipped ship is wrecked, but somehow all the articles and the ship itself is rather well preserved while all the passengers and crew die except the family. They make a raft and alight on the island that is to become their home. The family, through resourcefulness and through an expansive knowledge of the natural sciences, is able to get along rather impressively in their new jungle home. They’re constantly making trips along the beaches and into the interior of the island in an effort to find out all they can about their new home and to discover new natural resources such as plants and animals they can use to make their life a bit more comfortable and pleasant. Most trips result in a success of one form or another, and soon the family has a couple places to live, orchards, fields, and an abundant number of livestock and beasts of burden of all various types. There are some adventures along the way with wild animals, explosives, and the rigors of life under the open skies. The family’s chance for rescue and a return to society is foiled by rough weather, and they must await another such rare opportunity to come, but such opportunities and the adventures in the meantime are left to the reader to invent for himself.
In Мормоны в России: Путь длиной в столетие (ISBN: 9-785-91189-005-6), or Mormons in Russia: A Century-long Path (my translation), by Sergei Antonenko, these two newer interests of mine are brought together in an academic, historical essay on the Church in Russia. Antonenko gives a brief history of the Church, including its founding, Brigham Young leading the Saints to Utah, and its relative stability and growth since that time. He also discusses in rather finite detail the theology of the Church. The next big portion of the work is dedicated to what various pre-Soviet writers and intellectuals in the imperial Russia wrote and thought about the Church. Dostoevsky and Tolstoy get specific mention. Finally, the history of the Church in post-Soviet Russia is discussed. Since this includes the late 1980s when missionaries traveled to the Soviet Union from Finland for the weekend only, it might be slightly inaccurate to say “post-Soviet Russia.” As with the rest of the book, the writing about the Church in Russia has less to do with specific incidents such as organizational changes, legal registrations, or sensational events like missionaries being kidnapped, and more to do with how the Church has fit or not fit into Russian society and the general Russian consciousness. It is, in places, a fascinating look into the perceptions — and souls — of Russia’s great people.
Bosnia: In the Footsteps of Gavrilo Princip by Tony Fabijančić (ISBN: 978-0-88864-519-7) is a travelogue that traces the route of Gavrilo Princip’s travels through the former Yugoslavia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Set largely in the modern-day Balkans, the book uses Princip and his story as a way to understand the region’s complicated history and its rather sticky present through observation, interviews, and referencing historical sources. The author, rather sympathetic to Princip before undertaking his research and travels, was also optimistic at the outset about the chances for the various ethnic and religious groups of the former Yugoslavia to mend things up a little bit. By the end of his efforts and the end of the book, after traveling through thick forests, high alps, Mediterranean coastline, and the smog of big cities, he has changed his tune on both counts, considering Princip to have misjudged the impact of his actions, and not just misjudged, but having brought about more harm than good as well as coming to the realization that the peoples of the region, harboring some of the same prejudices and stereotypes as those held about 100 years ago as WWI broke out, aren’t breaking out of those molds any time soon. 
As those more in tune with pop culture than me know, The Three Musketeers (ISBN: 0-679-60332-8) by Alexandre Dumas tells the story of the young d’Artagnan and his three protectors and friends, the eponymous three Musketeers, who go by their pseudonyms, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. Duelling brings d’Artagnan and the Musketeers together, and from there they fight duels and more serious battles together, continually looking out for each other. They manage to get themselves mixed up in high-level intrigue as the queen of France, Cardinal Richelieu, the king of France, and the Duke of Buckingham play out their political ambitions, romantic interests, and personal aspirations in Paris’s parlors, on battlefields, and through behind-the-scenes intrigues involving soldiers, churchmen, and criminals. There is a decent bit of action with horse rides, pistol fights, sword fights, battles between armies and between minds, and seduction. In the end, the bad guys get what is coming to them, and in what seems to be a bit of a pattern for Dumas, not all of the good guys make it out alive. D’Artagnan and his friends are more or less unscathed and have lived up to their immortal motto, “All for one, one for all!”
Balkan Ghosts by Robert D. Kaplan (ISBN: 978-0-312-42493-0), is self-styled as a travelogue, but is more akin to a feature story in a national magazine on current affairs. Kaplan weaves his extensive travels and living experience in the region and the accompanying interviews and everyday events with historical perspective and the relevant biographical information pertaining to the important figures in the Balkans’ history, his “ghosts.” Kaplan’s definition of the Balkans is a bit wider than most Americans’, so not only the former Yugoslavia, but Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece, too, are included in the discussion of this fascinating geographical region. Each country and each nation (ethnic group) has a few figures in its past who lived in such a way and made decisions in such a way as to continue to influence the way things are done and the way people think. With the exception of Greece, the Balkans also deal with a specter of a different type, the continued need to deal with the harsh consequences of communist dictatorships that broke people and destroyed countries immediately after the Nazis and fascism gave the same thing a whirl. It’s worth noting that the Nazis followed right on the heels of the Hapsburgs, who were, in most people’s estimation, better rulers than the succeeding ones, but on occasion no less ruthless. The great figures and great histories of the various peoples are presented with all the raw emotion that is associated with Balkanization, and Kaplan points out that since the histories are great, the people pick those moments when their histories were at an apex and claim that cultural, linguistic, and territorial summit as the way things should be now before any other discussions can be had. It puts them all in a hard place, but Kaplan argues that considering all the things these groups of people and these countries have been through, there’s really no way but up, although, as his reference to Shakespeare alludes to, it might be a painful process.
Sheri Dew was one of the Church leaders who reached a rather high level of celebrity status in the Church, and maybe even a little out of it, largely because of her supposed novelty: a never-married member of the Relief Society presidency. She, like many other Church leaders who have become celebrities in their own right, used that increased ability to get a message out by writing a few books. God Wants a Powerful People (ISBN: 978-1-59038-813-6) is one of them. The premise of the book is simple. God is generous and is willing to make His children powerful people, people who can accomplish a lot, help a lot of other people, and in general make the world a better place. God wants to bless us. When we do certain things, like striving to be righteous, the blessings flow, and by taking advantage of them, we become powerful people, changing not only our own lives, but the lives of those around us. The book includes examples from everyday life on how we can go about becoming on of these powerful people, scriptures, ideas from Church leaders, and some common sense thrown in, too. As with anything in the gospel, the biggest keys are probably putting words and ideas into action and relying on Jesus Christ in all of our efforts to improve and to help others.
Leon Aron, author of Russia’s Revolution: Essays, 1989–2006 (ISBN: 978-0-8447-4242-7), was always interested in Russia because he was born in the USSR. Although he emigrated and came to America after the Soviets started letting Jews leave, he remained interested in his homeland and became a respected commentator and scholar on the land of Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Stalin, and now Vladimir Putin. Aron has written extensively on all things Russia, and in this book, he compiled essays that take the reader through life in Russia from the early days of Boris Yeltsin through the middle years of Putin’s first term in office as Russia’s president. Aron describes Yeltsin and his democratization efforts. He is quite a fan of Yeltsin, praising his statesmanship and ability to hold together a country that had partially fallen apart and threated to completely implode on a daily basis. Aron touches on every aspect of Russia reborn, including food, oil, politics, oligarchs, literature, the military, and international relations. All of these vastly different aspects of life in the post-Soviet Russia give an idea of what was happening in the country at the time the essay was written. Aron finishes up his compilation with discussions of Putin, a — to put it mildly — controversial figure and one of Russia’s largest struggles during the 1990s, Chechnya. Aron’s point, even with the various negatives that Putin and Chechnya seemed to usher in, was that much good has happened since the Soviet Union fell apart in Russia and even though there have been and continue to be bumps in the road (and they’re often big bumps), things are probably going in the right direction, but the only way to tell is to wait and see. The West didn’t get to its heights in 20 years, and Russia won’t either.
The prolific French writer Alexandre Dumas’s epic adventure, The Count of Monte Cristo (ISBN: 0-679-60199-6), tells an intricately woven tale of injustice, revenge, hope, mercy, and even forgiveness. The first part of the book gives the reader no indications whatsoever of the impending treachery and troubles as one is acquainted with the hero, Edmond Dantès, a dashing, honest, and hard-working sailor about to fulfill a few of his life's dreams. A jealous neighbor, a competitor for the affections of his love, and colleague who couldn't bear seeing Dantès promoted before himself stop those plans, though, and send the main character's life in a totally different direction. Prison, though, affords us with our first adventure: sneaking out of prison in another prisoner's body bag. After that, there are many adventures to be had with Dantès on ships, with smugglers, and finally, in Paris as he exacts revenge on those who put him in prison and deprived him of his father, his beloved, and his desired job. In Paris, the rich Count of Monte Cristo wows the elites, works his way into their lives, and manages to bring those lives to screeching halts, usually through ignominious deaths. Although Dantès exacts his revenge, he starts to realize that maybe it's not all about justice, especially as he sees his former girlfriend reduced to a thoroughly depressed and unhappy state. His shows mercy almost to a fault toward those who were once nice to him, but eventually even to one of his avowed enemies.